Scott Siskind was the quasi-anonymous author of Slate Star Codex, a rationalist blog that burned brightly at the place where erudition and reaction meet. He inaugurates his new venue, Astral Codex Ten, with an essay about how his efforts to avoid media exposure only Streisanded him more completely, costing him his job.
I left my job. They were very nice about it, they were tentatively willing to try to make it work. But I just don't think I can do psychotherapy very well while I'm also a public figure, plus people were already calling them trying to get me fired and I didn't want to make them deal with more of that.
You will find statistics and claims to question, of course. But it's a great read, a timely rationalization of the incentives to set yourself on fire in public, and a strong plea for privacy in general. I especially enjoyed the echoing praise given to certain people who tried to assist him, like the "honourable men" Mark Antony shivs in his funeral oration for Caesar.
But he also writes sincerely of those who simply sympathized and shared their own experiences:
Getting all these emails made me realize that, whatever the merits of my own case, maybe by accident, I was fighting for something important here. Who am I? I'm nobody, I'm a science blogger with some bad opinions. But these people – the trans people, the union organizers, the police whistleblowers, the sexy cyborgs – the New York Times isn't worthy to wipe the dirt off their feet. How dare they assert the right to ruin these people's lives for a couple of extra bucks. …but I was also grateful to get some emails from journalists trying to help me understand the perspective of their field. They point out that reporting is fundamentally about revealing information that wasn't previously public, and hard-hitting reporting necessarily involves disclosing things about subjects that they would rather you not know.
A psychiatrist who quotes the live-action Street Fighter movie while taking great care to distance themselves from Curtis Yarvin? Welcome to the 2020s, it's gonna be great!
